Vulgar History Podcast
Empress Matilda (Ann’s Version)
February 12, 2025
Ann Foster:
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast, my name is Ann Foster. You may be able to hear some cat purring, that is my cat, Hepburn, who’s been my co-host ever since the show started in 2019. I think in one of those first episodes, I was like, “Oh, I guess this is going to be one of those podcasts where I mention my cat because she likes to hop up and purr directly into the microphone,” and ever since then, she’s been part of the podcast. Today, we’re listening to one of the early episodes of this podcast. Vulgar History has been around now for five years; we started in November 2019. I’ve been revisiting some of these classic episodes from the earlier ones. It was a few years ago where I started working with an actual editor who is the amazing Cristina Lumague, who takes my random recordings filled with cat noises and makes them sound good. So, she’s going back when we re-release these episodes, so she’s cleaning up the audio from these older episodes where I was doing my best to try to research, record, and edit, and editing, not my strong suit.
Anyway, this is a very interesting episode to be revisiting at this point in time, partially because… So, this is the episode about Empress Matilda, and this episode came out on March 25th, 2020, which was evident in the intro that you’re going to hear when we get into the actual classique episode because, well, you know, when you hear this, you’ll think back and remember like, “Yeah, March 2020 was a real weird time.” That was the month when the world shut down, and no one knew what was happening and what was going to happen. Lots of things have happened, lots of unprecedented times have happened since then. But that was a really weird time, and so just listening to myself from back then, it’s like, yeah, that was a real weird time. And then, as now, I do continue to find distraction, but also some comfort in reading about people in history who lived through challenges and how they got through them.
But also, in re-listening to this episode myself, there’s some connections to later episodes. First of all, the thing I kept thinking of when I was going back through this episode is the resonances with Fredegund, Fredegund and Brunhild, who were— If you’re a new listener, welcome, and pause this, go listen to the Fredegund episodes, then the Brunhild episode, then come back, because there’s such Fred energy to all of this. What Matilda was up to, I mean, her escape in the snow reminds me of Fredegund disguising as trees, and her unrelenting, the way that it’s like, “Now this person’s on her side, now this person’s not on her side.” There’s not a Brunhild frenemy in this, but it’s got big Fredegund energy. So yeah, maybe that’s part of why I like this story so much and why I like Fredegund’s story so much; I just like a woman leading armies and just not stopping, just always going. And then also how it’s kind of like, “Okay, I guess if I can’t be in charge, then I will just basically rule, but it’ll be my son who’s technically in charge.”
Anyway, the other connection I wanted to mention is (and I do say this in the episode) that Matilda’s grandmother is Margaret of Scotland. We’ve done an episode about her just last year with a special guest, E.K. McAlpine from It’s Like History, because that’s Saint Margaret of Scotland who is E.K.’s, like, person, the way that Fredegund is my person, Margaret of Scotland is hers. So, that’s an interesting connection.
I do also want to say when you listen to this episode, part way through, you will hear Ann of the past, in March of 2020, allude to the fact that maybe next week there’s going to be an episode about Eleanor of Aquitaine. There was not, I did not do an episode about Eleanor of Aquitaine in 2020, nor have I in the subsequent four years, five years, [chuckles] done an episode about Eleanor of Aquitaine. Perhaps one day I will. I still find her story incredibly overwhelming to even wrap my head around, and we’re deep in the 18th century now, but who knows? Maybe in the future, here, I’ll set myself up, you know, later we’ll do an inception level… Five years from now, I’ll redo this episode with a third new intro, where I’ll be like, “Haha! I still haven’t done it.” But maybe in the future, I’ll do a whole Eleanor of Aquitaine, like, series or miniseries or something. Her story is huge, and I can’t deal with it. But, you know, I did think I could back then, and I did not.
Anyway, so listen to a little baby Ann, Ann of March of 2020, working through those unprecedented times. You know what? I was just thinking, again, I don’t know if you can hear Hepburn, she’s literally next to the microphone. She and I had some good times in early 2020. I was working from home, we just, like, snuggled on the sofa all day. I feel like she had a nice time having me around. And at the same time, I think she was glad when I went back into the office because she and I, we’re both… We like our alone time. Anyway, here’s the episode. Enjoy!
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Hello, and welcome to the Vulgar History podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and this is Quarantine Edition, Season 2. Our theme is Women Leaders in History and the Men Who Whined About It. And I’m recording this in the past; you’re listening to this in my future, and today that I’m recording this, everything is chaos. A lot of people are working from home, there’s a pandemic going on, everything’s pretty intense, and I like listening to podcasts about history and other things to sort of, get my mind off of what’s up in the world and perhaps you do too. And perhaps you’re listening to this in the far-off distant future, and you’re like, “Oh man, remember in March of 2020, all that weird pandemic stuff was happening? What a crazy time. Here’s a podcast someone recorded when that was all happening where she talked about her feelings.”
So, today, I’m going to do my best to bring you as delightful a podcast episode as usual. And honestly, this story is so great. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t not do this. Honestly, doing the podcast is kind of therapeutic for me. Anyway, I hope you enjoy listening to it. It’s a story that I did a pile of research for. I, like, literally finished researching yesterday, I think, because it’s a story I kind of knew, but I really wanted to make sure I got all the minutiae and the details correct because it’s sort of the story that inspired this whole season of the podcast.
So, we’re talking about Empress Matilda, who is a person you may or may not know about. Or you might have vaguely heard about her. But I read a book about her a bit ago, it’s a recent-ish book by Catherine Hanley that’s just called, I think it’s just called Matilda, but I’ll put links in the show notes. It is an excellent, excellent, excellent biography. Actually, first, I heard her interview on the BBC History Extra podcast about this book, and it got me thinking about the whole, just the double standards that women leaders have faced since, seemingly, as we’ve been learning on this podcast, time immemorial. Oh, the book is actually called Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior by Catherine Hanley, but again, I’ll put links in the show notes. She really dives into Matilda’s story in a super interesting, very readable sort of way that really gets your attention. And really, I like history books like this that really sort of help you imagine what the person was like, what the situation was like, not just, like, “This battle, this war,” et cetera, et cetera. But really, why people were making the decisions they were making and just kind of what the whole context of the world was.
In some ways, my hobby, my interest in reading about history, is part of what’s keeping me pretty… I wouldn’t say calm, but I would say, like, head on my shoulders-ish, vis-à-vis the current global pandemic because it’s like, so much shitty stuff has happened all the time, all the time! All over the place: awful things, weird things, unexpected things. Stuff like a pandemic when it happens, like, if you’re talking about back in the day, you’ve got your Black Plague going on, the 1918 influenza, like, these things come up, and it just sort of reminds you that like we’re all still people. We have the internet and stuff now, but, like, things aren’t that different from whatever, you know, a thousand years ago, just in terms of, like, we’re still fragile human bodies, and the flu can whatever.
So, it just sort of like, it puts into perspective as well, the women who we’re looking at this season and last season, frankly, but just thinking about the odds and what you’re up against, not just from society, as we’ll see what happens with Matilda, but also just the world and how everything can be bonkers. And it’s so much easier to just kind of sit back and be like, “Well, here’s the world and let’s just deal with it.” But to be someone like Matilda, who’s just, like, challenging the status quo/almost dying in childbirth in the year 1100-something, to just keep going… Anyway, all the stuff she does is all the more impressive when you just put it in the context of just, like, the world in general. So, without further ado, we’re going to get into this story.
So, I did mention the Matilda book by Catherine Hanley, Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior. And there’s another book that was a mega reference for me in this, which is a book that is called She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor. Also super recommend, also put in the show notes so you can get some more information about these books. And also, I’m figuring some stuff out about, like, how I’m going to link to them. There’s this really great website called
Bookshop.org, where you can make lists and stuff. So, by the time I post this, maybe that’ll all be working. Who knows where the link is going to lead you in the show notes, but what I can tell you is that if you go to AudibleTrial.com/VulgarHistory, you can get a one-month free trial of Audible and maybe you can listen to the Matilda book there because it’s also good as an audiobook. Full disclosure: that’s how I read it.
So, we’re going back. So, the last episode we did was about Æthelflæd. You’ve got to love that my laptop, when I type in “AE,” it auto finishes it to Æthelflæd. That is how much I have read about the awesome person. So, last time we talked about Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. So, she was around circa 870 until the year 918. And then we’re going to zoom ahead a little bit. So, she was part of the Anglo-Saxon scenario, but now we’re moving into the Norman dynasty. So, we’re going to have a little history lesson now. If you’re on a self-isolation or quarantine, here’s some learning for you, maybe for your youths who you’re homeschooling.
So, William the Conqueror was a man who invaded England in 1066 with his wife, Matilda of Flanders. That’s not the Matilda we’re going to be talking about. Guess what? There’s 11 different people called Matilda in this story. 11! I’m going to do my best to differentiate them for you. So, this is the first Matilda, Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror. So, he was from Normandy, which was an area of France, and when he invaded England and took over, there’s the Bayeux Tapestry tells that whole story, and he brought in with him the new Norman dynasty and also the French language. And he sort of replaced everybody, all the officials, with new French people, he made French the language and a whole new regime. He just sort of swept away the whole Anglo-Saxon situation. So, although he brought in with him a sort of French thing, where generally a king is inherited by his firstborn legitimate son, there were some shenanigans and his illegitimate son, Henry, wound up taking over when William died. This is one of several Henrys, so just like, buckle up.
So, Henry was both King of England and Duke of Normandy because that was William the Conqueror’s title when he took over England. So, at this point, England was the England that we know, the little island, and then across the channel, part of France. So, it was sort of, like, bi-coastal. As far as dynasties go, the Normans were still pretty new in the sense of, like, William the Conqueror was the first, and then Henry was the second one. So, much dependent on having a clear line of succession to follow him after he died, Henry, because he wanted to continue on having Normans being in charge. This is not entirely dissimilar from, you’re familiar with the saga of Henry VIII, that whole thing where he was just like, “I have to have the Tudors keep going. Oh no, daughters!”
So, what happened here is that… So, we had William the Conqueror, his wife Matilda of Flanders, his illegitimate son was Henry. Henry’s wife, also called Matilda, but she had her name changed to Edith, or her name was Edith, and it was changed to Matilda, because at this point in time, women had to be called Matilda, apparently. So, we’re going to call her Edith Matilda, sort of like on The Hills, Justin Bobby, Edith Matilda. So, she was incredibly pious and religious to the point that after she had one daughter and one son, she basically ran off to become a nun, literally washing the feet of lepers, like, wearing a hairshirt, just like super religious in this kind of like, 1100s sort of way.
So, Henry was a Norman from France, and Edith Matilda was the daughter of the Scottish King Malcolm III and also a descendant of Alfred the Great, Alfred the Great being the father of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, I think. So, Edith Matilda had some Anglo-Saxon to her. So, it was a beneficial marriage for Henry because he was the heir of this French guy who took over, but Edith Matilda brought over the Anglo-Saxon stuff. So, it was a good alliance to sort of solidify them as leaders. Genetically, what this meant was that their children were even more legitimate English rulers than either Edith Matilda or Henry because they had both sides.
So, their first child born was our heroine, the main Matilda, who was born on or around May 7, 1102. So, this is, like, 100-ish years later than Aethelflaed. So, one year later, Matilda’s brother was born, and he was called William Ætheling. So, the Normans, being a new dynasty, hadn’t quite sorted out what their inheritance rules would be. Like generally, but they were like, “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to do sons are more important than daughters because that’s just kind of what everyone’s doing all around us.” And they also were like, “Sons outrank daughters, which means William Ætheling will be the heir, but also legitimate children outrank illegitimate children.” So, even though… We’ll get to it, but Henry had a lot of illegitimate children, but William Ætheling was it, he was the heir.
So, Edith Matilda, the mom, she was super religious, basically became a nun after having two children. Side note: her mother, Margaret of Scotland, literally was made a saint. So, it’s just, like, a long line of super-religious Scottish women. So, everything rested on William Ætheling’s shoulders vis-a-vis inheritance because there was not going to be any more sons, Edith Matilda pieced out of childbearing entirely. Henry had 24 illegitimate children that we know of, including three other girls also named Matilda. So, our Matilda tally is now up to five. So, we have our Matilda, and she has three illegitimate half-sisters, also called Matilda; her mother, also called Matilda; her grandmother, Matilda. That’s just where we’re at right now. Henry’s oldest and most important bastard was named Robert Earl of Gloucester. We’ll hear more about him later, but spoiler, he’s great! This is not a story where, like, men are awful to women all the time, and then everyone dies like some of our other episodes in this podcast season. There are some good guys in this story, it’s refreshing, Robert of Gloucester being one of them.
So, little is known about Matilda’s earliest life, but she probably stayed with her mother, was taught to read and was educated in religious morals because, god knows, Edith Matilda was all about religion. Among the nobles at her mother’s court, where she was raised, were her uncle David, who was later made King of Scotland. Because remember, Edith Matilda’s father was the King of Scotland, so her brother becomes King of Scotland later. David, also important, good dude later on. Robert of Gloucester, good dude, her half-brother, also there. Also there, her cousin Stephen of Blois, Blois, her cousin Stephen, and he’s going to become important later. Is he a good guy? We will see.
In 1108, when she was 6, Henry left Matilda and her brother in the care of Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, while he travelled to Normandy. Anselm was a favourite cleric of Matilda’s mother. So, Henry was, like, bopping back and forth, like England, Normandy, pretty regularly because that’s what happens when you’re the King of England/Duke of Normandy. You have to keep checking on both parts of what you’re in charge of. As a princess, Matilda’s job was to marry someone important, help maintain and/or grow England and her father’s land ownership.
Luckily, King Heinrich of Rome/Germany, he’s not entirely Holy Roman Emperor. So, we had ancient Rome in some previous podcasts this season. What happened is that Rome sort of fell apart, stopped being Rome. And then Charlemagne, this guy, came in, and he was like, “You know what’s great? Rome. I’m going to call this area,” which is kind of basically Germany/Austria, “I’m going to call this Rome the Holy Roman Empire,” just because he thought that made it sound impressive. So, there’s not actually a connection between the Holy Roman Empire and the oldey-time Roman Empire. And what’s happening in this period, where are we? 1108. So, King Heinrich was King of Germany and also of Rome, sort of. Other people have written about this, that’s not… We’re just talking about Matilda. I find it very confusing, frankly, There’s a pandemic going on, let’s just move on.
So effectively, Matilda was 8 years old, and she was shipped off to Germany to marry 24-year-old King Heinrich, which is not weird for this situation because they didn’t actually, like, become man and wife at this point. When she was 8, she was crowned the Queen of Rome/Germany, but she wasn’t actually married to Heinrich until four years later when she was 12. And that’s still weird, but like, so much is weird. Anyway, she went over, she became his sort of protegé/wife. Two years later, when she was 14, she accompanied Heinrich to Rome, where he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor—so, that whole thing that he was dealing with sorted itself out—making her the Empress. So, this is controversial because the Pope was away that day, so a different person actually crowned them. So, it’s like, is she really the Empress? But, like, that’s a stupid controversy. Obviously, she’s the Empress. She considered herself the Empress from that point on, and that’s how she became known as Empress Matilda, is from this time.
So, in 1115, the sixth Matilda enters the story. This is Matilda of Tuscany, who was an accomplished military leader/countess in Italy. She died, which spurred on some dynastic struggles for who would be in charge of what parts of what because… This is why you want to have, like, a really strong dynasty, so when you die, it’s obvious who’s going to inherit, so there’s not all these scuffles about who’s in charge of what. At one point during this whole thing, Heinrich ran off to do a campaign, and he left his wife Matilda, who was 16 years old at this point, in charge of Italy as his regent. So, like, she’s not a teenage trophy wife here, like, from the time she was 8, she would have been sort of raised and taught how to be a ruler, how to govern things to the point that he left her in charge when she was 16 years old. Like, she knew what was going on. Matilda and Heinrich didn’t have any children, though there might have been a child lost in infancy and life just kind of continued on like this. They were married, she was growing out of being a teenager and into being an adult-sized person. And then 1120, everything changed!
So, the whole thing where England was divided between England and Normandy meant people were going back and forth on ships a lot, as I mentioned. So, in 1120, what happened is King Henry and his entourage went over on one ship, this sort of like, grown-up ship, while William Ætheling, who’s Matilda’s brother/Henry’s heir, went across on another ship that was, like, the party ship. So, William Ætheling’s ship was filled with a bunch of his half-siblings—remember, he had 24 of them—as long as his friends and his wife, William Ætheling’s wife, is the seventh Matilda in the story, Matilda of Anjou. This ship, the party ship, was called the White Ship. Oh, also on board the ship was one of the half-sisters, Matilda FitzRoy, their half-brother, Thomas FitzStephen. So, it was just, like, a party ship full of illegitimate royals/William Ætheling, heir to the throne. So, they were drinking and partying and whatever, and there were, like, 300 people on board, although some disembarked because the drinking was a bit much for them, which is, like, the drinking was a bit much for you French nobles in the 11th century? Like, that’s a lot of drinking. So, one of the passengers who got out was Matilda and William Ætheling’s cousin, Stephen, who I mentioned before… Foreshadowing! He didn’t die.
And then, in a sort of Titanic scenario, the passengers challenged the captain to sail faster than the king’s ship because there’s, like, the grown-up ship, then there’s the White Ship, the party ship next to it. So, they were just, like, drag racing ships. But then the White Ship, the party ship, struck a submerged rock. And the rock, and I’m not sure why, I forgot to look this up, has a name, it’s called a Quilleboeuf, something beef. I’m not sure why this rock has a name, famous rock. So, the White Ship capsized. William Ætheling got on an escape raft, a lifeboat, I’m not sure what’s up, and he could have escaped, but he went back to save his half-sister Matilda (not our Matilda, the other Matilda sister). But then he went back in the sort of raft, and then others climbed onto the raft to try and save themselves, and then they all drowned. Their half-brother Thomas FitzStephen allegedly survived, along with a butcher named [phonetic] Barold, by clinging onto the rock, the Quilleboeuf. But when Thomas heard that William Ætheling had died, he let himself drown rather than have to face his father, the king, with this bad news. Everyone knew the king was going to freak out. In fact— Oh, so Barold, the butcher, was the only survivor.
Everyone was so afraid of how much they knew King Henry was going to freak out that they didn’t tell him about the disaster for, like, a few days. And when he found out, he obviously freaked out. So, he was like, “Shit. I need an heir.” Like, he has these 24 illegitimate children, several, at least three of whom just died in this disaster. But illegitimate children, he didn’t want them to inherit. His only other legitimate child was Matilda, and it’s just like, “What? A girl? Mmm, that’s weird.” So, he quickly married another woman who was named Adeliza, which is a great name, not just because it’s not Matilda, but also because it’s not Matilda. And basically, he married her to try and have another son and heir so that he could make the succession more straightforward. So, at this point, that’s what everyone assumed would happen.
So, Matilda continued on being empress back in Germany/Rome. So, five years pass, and now it’s 1125, and Matilda’s husband Heinrich died, and she hadn’t had any children with him. She didn’t stick around there because she wasn’t the regent to the next emperor. Also, there was a thing where Holy Roman Emperor was… elected? I researched a lot about Matilda, I did not research a lot about Holy Roman Empire, so other people can fill in those blanks for you if that’s of interest. But effectively, Matilda had, like, Holy Roman Empire, Germany/Rome was kind of like, “Bye!” So, she suddenly lost her job and her status and the way she’d been living for 15 years. Note, the new Holy Roman Emperor was Heinrich’s longtime nemesis, Lothair, which is a very evil-sounding name that is very cool.
So, Henry hadn’t had a child in five years with his new wife, Adeliza, so Matilda was starting to seem like a much more important sort of person. Henry was still hoping to have a new son with Adeliza, but just to make things go more smoothly in general, he held a formal event where all the nobles were to support Matilda as his heir until he had a new son, so sort of like a stopgap measure. There’s actually some, everyone was like, “This is a great idea,” because he’s the king, and they wanted to make him think all of his ideas are good. And there was actually some fighting among the nobles for who got to swear allegiance to Matilda first because they were all just so excited to get to prove their loyalty. The three who all wanted to be first were Robert of Gloucester (Matilda’s half-brother, the eldest of the 24 bastards and good dude), Scotland’s King David (Matilda’s uncle, Edith Matilda’s brother, also a good guy), and Stephen, who we’re going to hear about later, but her goddamn cousin who almost died on the White Ship disaster, but didn’t because he didn’t like to party so hard.
So, the plan wasn’t actually for Matilda to take over. It was more that everyone would pledge allegiance to her in anticipation that maybe in case Henry and Adeliza didn’t have a child, Matilda would have a son, and that new son would be the king, and hopefully, Henry would live long enough to just have that boy be the new king. So, to make this happen, Matilda needed a new husband for various reasons, including land that they wanted to have control over. The best and only option was Geoffrey, the son of the Duke of Anjou, he was also the brother of Matilda of Anjou, William Ætheling’s wife, who died on the party ship. Geoffrey was also 15 years old, and Matilda was 23. So, Matilda had been empress, like, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, for 15 years, the entire lifespan of Geoffrey. So, she had a lot of experience, and he was a teenager. Apparently, he was very handsome, but he was also 15 years old and a Duke. So, she didn’t want to marry a 15-year-old Duke, having just come off of being literally the Empress. Also, that means that she’d be sort of downgraded to Duchess, which is just not what she wanted to do.
She resisted, but Henry didn’t care what she thought. He personally had Geoffrey knighted, and despite Matilda probably still grieving for her husband/mentor of 15 years, her father made her do it, and so she married Geoffrey. I just want to mention that Geoffrey’s father is called Fulk, which is an amazing name, and he quickly left to go to the new, to the kingdom. At that point, it was a new Latin kingdom of Jerusalem where he married Melisende, the Queen of Jerusalem. So, Geoffrey was now Duke of Normandy because his father ran off to become King of Jerusalem, which is like, got to read about that later. Melisende sounds amazing.
So, Matilda married this teenage boy she didn’t want to. She refused to use her title of Duchess and insisted to still be referred to as Empress. By 1129, which is less than two years into their marriage, the couple were living in separate countries because they hated each other so much. Henry was like, “This is not great for the plan of you having a child that will be my new heir.” So, he did some mediation. And by 1131, he got them back in the same place. Two years later, age 31, Matilda gave birth to her first child, who was a little redheaded baby son who she named Henry. Less than a year later, she was giving birth again, but in a much more challenging experience. The second baby was a boy named Geoffrey, who survived his birth, but Matilda almost died. She was so close to dying that she started preparing her will. And just as sort of an example of her being amazing, even as she was dying in the year 1130-whatever, she forced her father to agree to let her be buried in a place of her choosing instead of where he wanted to put her. So, she’s just, like, negotiating even while dying. But then she didn’t die! Hooray.
Matilda and Geoffrey, now the parents of two sons and Geoffrey being now, I think 20, at least not 15 anymore, they developed a new relationship based on being parents of these two sons, and they started to get along on that sort of respect. But unfortunately, Geoffrey and King Henry did not get along, and Matilda was in the middle of all of this. So, by 1135, she and her father were fully estranged. Matilda and Geoffrey and their sons were off in Anjou, and Matilda was pregnant for the third time while Henry hung out in Normandy. King Henry went off on a hunting trip one day when he made a mistake against doctor’s orders to eat lampreys for supper, which are a kind of eel, and they famously killed him because of food poisoning-related reasons. So, he died super unexpectedly from eating lampreys on a hunting trip, age 67. RIP.
And then everything suddenly went chaos super quickly, partially because just, like, where everybody was located at the time and who was close and who was where, and you had to deliver messages by horses. So, by the time the word reached Matilda in Anjou that her father had died, she rode north to claim that some disputed castles that she’d been promised as part of her dowry. This would later become her main headquarters for what she was going to do later. She was not able to do any more though. She couldn’t head over to England because her pregnancy was really, really not pleasant for her, she was not able to travel. Like, remember she almost died last time. She was what now, like 35? So, even now, like, if you’re 35 years old, that’s like, you know, you want to check in with your doctor pretty regularly about your pregnancy. And this is, like, you’re 35 in the year 1135; she couldn’t go off and do anything because she was practically dying of pregnancy. Meanwhile… Oh, so Geoffrey was also busy with a rebellion in Anjou. So, everyone’s kind of like on their separate parts of the chessboard.
Meanwhile, as soon as he heard the news, Matilda’s cousin Stephen, who you might remember, who was also in another part of France, grabbed a ship and rode flat out. So basically, he grabbed a ship, sailed over the narrowest part of the English Channel, which is fortuitously close to where he was. He didn’t sleep; he just rode flat out to London, where he visited his brother, also called Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, who is sort of the Pope’s representative in England. With his help, Stephen declared himself the new king on December 22nd, three weeks after the king died. Stephen was crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry hadn’t even had a funeral yet, and Matilda was off being pregnant in France.
So, Stephen had been one of Henry’s favourites, but a number of reasons why this is like an unexpected turn of events, part of which is that he wasn’t even the oldest of his brothers, his oldest brother is called Thibault, so this was an incredibly bold move of him to take. The precedent that he was following was, though, basically that of literally Henry himself, who had done a really similar thing. So, Henry’s father, William the Conqueror, had died— Oh no, when the conqueror died, then his son became king, that son died in a hunting accident, and then Henry was the brother of that son. But basically, the same thing happened. A king died in a hunting accident, Henry was just like, “I’m king now!” and took over, even though he wasn’t sort of supposed to be. So, Stephen, this is kind of, like, not unexpected in that way, I guess this is not unprecedented. So, Matilda would have been weird in the sense of it being a straightforward succession because no Norman king had actually done that yet. But the fact that she was a woman made it all even more complicated because even though there wasn’t a rule that said women can’t be in charge, no one had really done that before. Also note, Stephen had been one of the first nobles back in that previous thing where Henry had gotten everybody to pledge their support of Matilda. Stephen was one of those three guys fighting to be the first ones to pledge. So, betrayal!
So, there hadn’t been a woman in charge of England before, to the point that there wasn’t even a word for that because, at this point, the word “queen” meant “woman married to the king.” Like that was part of why Æthelflæd was just called Lady of the Mercians, like, there wasn’t… So, Matilda was fighting to become king effectively. This is part of the reason why she liked her title of Empress because it was sort of on par with Emperor, it wasn’t as less-than as queen is sort of less than the king. So, Stephen set off a chain of events that led to a civil war known as the Anarchy. So, King David of Scotland, who is Matilda’s uncle, who had been another one of the first ones to pledge to Matilda back in the day, heard what Stephen had done, rushed down to defend Matilda, but Stephen had more troops than he did and they wound up just sort of reaching an agreement where King David wouldn’t invade anymore.
In July 1136, Matilda gave birth to her third son who she named William, in her headquarters over there in France. And for the next two years, Stephen was king, and Matilda was presumably tending to her three young children/scheming and her cause was lost. Like, her cause was effectively lost, like, no one thought that she was, she had a chance at all. Until suddenly, Robert of Gloucester, her oldest half-brother, good dude, switched sides and pledged to be her champion. At around the same time, her uncle David, the Scottish king, also began fighting on her behalf. So suddenly, her dead-in-the-water chances were revived again with these powerful allies and their forces. In 1139, she stepped up personally to, like, make her claim, to say like, “You know what? I am the true monarch.” It’s not just these people fighting for her, but she’s stating this herself. That itself is basically an act of war/treason.
One of her first acts was she sent a messenger to the Pope to try and get them on her side against Stephen. But the Pope was like, “What’s done is done. Stephen is the king.” But Matilda’s like, “Ugh, fine.” So, she set out on foot, well, on a boat. And then she got off the boat, and then she set foot on English soil for the first time in eight years that year, and it was on. She also had a surprise new ally, and this is a twist I love, you know, women, her stepmother, Adeliza (remember her father’s second wife), who had by now remarried and had six children with her new husband. So clearly, she was not the impediment to having a child with Henry. Adeliza invited Matilda to come and stay with her at her castle in Arundel and to dock her ships there. So, just so we know where everybody is, Geoffrey, her former teenage husband, now an adult husband, and the three sons were back in Normandy, Matilda was, like, doing her own thing, she’s with Robert of Gloucester and they’re hanging out at Adeliza’s castle in Arundel.
So, the thing about Stephen is he is a lot like Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones; I believe he was actually the inspiration for Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones in terms of, like, a younger brother who takes over and who’s also just, like, really obsessed with ethics and morality and chivalry. So, Stephen was like, “Well, I can’t attack this castle because Adeliza is there, and she’s the former king’s wife. She’s a dowager queen. I can’t go there because Matilda is there. She’s the former king’s daughter; she’s also the Empress. I’m a guy; I can’t invade a castle with two queens in it.” So, what he did is he ordered Matilda to go and join Robert of Gloucester. So, Robert of Gloucester was off, camped somewhere nearby so that he could perhaps go and sort of attack them there. Stephen made a lot of, like, “What are you doing?” sort of moves, which makes the story more interesting, frankly. So, Matilda’s like, “Okay, I’ll go be with Robert of Gloucester,” but en route, she got even more nobles to join her side. And then my notes say, “Battles, battles, battles, subterfuge, et cetera.” Other people write about the details of the battles, but just bear in mind that all happened.
And then it’s 1141, and Stephen winds up captured in battle by Matilda’s forces. He tried to, like, sweet talk his way out of being in jail by talking to his guards and being like, “What if I just go for a walk in the woods and run away?” So, she ended up having to, like, literally put him in chains, but she couldn’t kill him because killing him was a precedent of, like, a monarch can’t kill a monarch. But she had the upper hand. She had beaten Stephen’s forces, but she needed the support of his brother, Bishop Henry, who you might remember from when he helped Stephen in the first place. And on March 2, 1141, he gave Matilda his blessing to be the new monarch. There was a ceremonial procession, she was declared officially Lady of England and Normandy, but not King or Queen. For that, she’d have to be crowned at Westminster Abbey.
This is the point at which the whole thing just gets, like… Augh, I hate it! So, she had won in battle, and she was now Lady of England and Normandy. And people were like, “Mmm, but you know what? She’s sort of full of herself. She’s sort of stuck up. She’s prideful. She’s arrogant,” which are, like, words that no one ever uses or used against her father, against her brother, against her grandfather. Like, William the Conqueror, no one was like, “Oh, William the Conqueror. He’s a bit full of himself. He’s kind of stuck up.” Like, these are completely gendered insults. And she was clearly, like, there was no role model for her in this situation. There had never been a female monarch of England that she knew of. So, she probably was emulating her powerful father and her first husband, her powerful father and her first husband, like, these two older men who she saw being these super powerful kings. And she would act like that. But when people saw a woman acting like that, they’re just like, “What are you doing?” People were like, “Why isn’t she more like her mother and grandmother, who were saints? Who were humble and modest? She should be like them.” But then, if she was like that, then she couldn’t rule. And so that’s just this awful, like, vicious cycle. “Her haughtiness and insolence was seen as unfeminine and therefore unnatural.”
So, Bishop Henry, her latest fan, who had agreed to crown her, was like, “I’m going to give you suggestions, and you should do exactly what I say,” and she was like, “Mm, I’ll take that into consideration. I was Empress for 15 years. Like, I know what I’m doing.” And then he was really mad that she didn’t do what he had said, even though no one ever had the expectation of, for instance, her father or her cousin. Men didn’t have the sort of expectation that they should do what their advisors said. When she spoke, one chronicler said that her voice was “Not with an unassuming gentleness, but with a voice of authority. She, with a grim look, her forehead wrinkled into a frown. Every trace of a woman’s gentleness removed from her face, blazed into unbearable fury.” So, men were just, kind of like, “She’s this woman, and she’s talking, and that’s gross to us.” Bishop Henry, the final straw for him was that he wanted her to endow Stephen’s personal estates to Stephen’s son Eustace. And Matilda was like, “Why would I do that? Eustace would then try and take over from me. That’s a stupid thing to suggest.” And Bishop Henry was really mad about that and decided to switch teams again, betraying her to go and help Stephen instead.
And then, so Stephen is still in jail, still in chains, and then what is this now? Like the eighth, the eighth Matilda? In the story, we’re going to call her Mathilde because that’s how it’s written. So, Stephen’s wife, Mathilde, had been queen, and she was pretty amazing herself. She was working hard to get him or at least his sons to be king now instead of Matilda to try and get rid of her. And because Mathilde was acting on behalf of her powerful husband and not in her own name, she wasn’t facing the same double standards as Matilda and was able to act more independently, ironically enough. The same chronicle that criticized Matilda’s behaviour as being so arrogant and not womanly, the same person cheered on Mathilde for “Forgetting the weakness of her sex and women’s softness. She bore herself with the valour of a man.” Like this was good for her, he’s cheering on Mathilde for being this sort of Amazon badass, meanwhile, saying like, “But Matilda, eughhh,” like, she was sort of snooty to people. Anyway, Matilda kept planning her coronation even as, unbeknownst to her, Mathilde, with the help of Bishop Henry, was launching attacks and wound up being Matilda’s undoing.
So, on June 24, 1141, Matilda was sitting down for a pre-coronation banquet, which was interrupted suddenly by all the bells and all of London tolling and thousands of Londoners bursting in with weapons in hand against her. This was all put together by Mathilde and Bishop Henry. So, Matilda and the company fled, and the Londoners ransacked her lodgings and, like, smushed up all her food and whatever, so turned against her. As such, she was never actually crowned Queen of England. One of the main voices against her at this point was goddamn Bishop Henry, who was, like, “She didn’t listen to my advice, she gloated too much. She’s a woman. It’s gross. We had to get rid of her.” And this is also partially— He really liked Mathilde because although Mathilde was this, like, super badass warrior woman who, like, I kind of like her as well, might do a little podcast about her sometime later, but when she went to talk to Bishop Henry, she was she acted all pious and humble and, you know, she went to him with like womanly tears and he was like, “Oh, that’s how women should behave.” So, she just knew how to play that game a bit better, I guess. Mathilde, respect.
Anyway, so Matilda learned of Bishop Henry’s betrayal and rode off to Winchester to face him down face to face. He ran away, of course, because he was so strong, like, so brave and criticizing her from a distance, but he couldn’t bear to see her in person because he was awful. He appealed to Mathilde as Matilda’s team settled into Winchester in a blockade scenario, waiting for him to return. So, Bishop Henry and Mathilde’s team, their army surrounded them and besieged the city. So, they’re in Winchester, this is all called the Rout of Winchester, this whole event. So, we’ve got Mathilde is teamed up with Bishop Henry, the army is surrounding Winchester, where Matilda is sieged with her supporters. On Sunday, September 14th, Robert of Gloucester, good dude, and his army made a huge last stand, mostly to distract the enemy so Matilda could escape, and she did! Riding astride, so instead of the side saddle way that women often did, she fled 40 miles northeast. She rode flat out literally for two days to the point where her body was so exhausted that for the final part of her escape, she was, like, laid out on sort of a stretcher between two horses because she was so fucking tired. Amazing. So, Robert of Gloucester did the distraction, Matilda escaped, rode flat out, she wasn’t just, like, sitting around being like, “I should be queen,” she was doing amazing stuff.
But she soon got news back in the safety of Gloucester that Robert of Gloucester, good dude, had been captured by Stephen’s forces. And Robert was really crucial to her whole thing; he was her half-brother. He was this, like, all the armies respected him so much, he was super important to her whole cause. The only way to get him freed was to do a prisoner exchange, to give them Stephen in exchange for Robert. So, she’s like, “What to do?” And while this is all happening, Geoffrey was doing an amazing job back in Normandy, sort of, taking over there to the point where it seemed like Stephen could just not get a foothold over Normandy. So, it was like, “Is it going to split up? Like, is England and Normandy two separate places now?” Bonus fun fact. There’s two twin brothers named Robert and Waleran of Leicester who were involved in this whole situation; one was on Stephen’s side, one was on Matilda’s side. They were twins.
So, Robert of Gloucester went to help Geoffrey in Normandy because he was so helpful, and Geoffrey figured that he could just help. But he was so helpful that Geoffrey kept delaying his return, not wanting him to go back because Robert of Gloucester was so helpful to him. But then, oh no, while that was happening, Robert of Gloucester was away. Matilda was left on her own, I mean, with her, you know, bodyguards, et cetera, in Oxford, and Stephen’s team came over and sieged Oxford. They surrounded it, tried to take it over. Robert, so pissed, he stormed back to England. This time, he brought with him Matilda’s 9-year-old son, Henry, and began fighting to free her.
So, now it’s December 1142. Matilda and her colleagues, they’ve been sieged in this castle, starving, like, literally starving for three months. So, she just decided, “You know what it’s time for? Another trademark Matilda daring escape.” And so, what she does is, with three bodyguards, they all cloaked themselves in white because it was snowy outside for camouflage. They snuck out through a side gate, they’re camouflaged against the freshly fallen snow because it’s December. They were on a river, but it was wintery enough that they could walk across the river. So, they walked across the river, got away. Nobody saw them at all! And Stephen was like, “Augh, good for her,” and he just, like, sieged in Oxford. And suddenly, again, her cause seemed lost, but then it lived for another day.
The guy, the chronicler who before wrote all those stupid stuff about her—which is a work that was sort of talking about how great Stephen is, so of course he always said shitty things about her—but he was like, “You know what? That was a cool thing she did. She probably just did it for attention, but like it was cool.” And having brought 9-year-old Henry over was sort of a lucky thing for Matilda and Geoffrey because he was their ace in the hole because if people didn’t want a woman leading, which was the main reason why people didn’t want to support Matilda, let’s be real, her son was a strong option. Matilda could not personally command troops on the battlefield, which a couple of times had been sort of what saved her that she was able to flee, and also, because Stephen didn’t want to attack her because she was a woman, but that sort of got in her way as people seeing her as a leader. But more importantly, her most important subjects were unwilling to accept a woman as a leader. Her son brought with him the same birthright, like being a descendant of the pre-King Henry, but without the baggage of being a woman. So, it’s at this point an utter stalemate between Stephen and Matilda that Matilda seems to begin pivoting to begin fighting not for the crown for herself to become king, but on behalf of her son, Henry, for him to become king. Her son Henry stayed in England until 1144, when he returned to France to train under his father, Geoffrey, to learn more about how to be a king, et cetera.
And then the years went by. Some of Matilda’s strongest fighters died mostly of natural causes. Robert of Gloucester, good dude, died of a fever, very sad. Some of her other fighters headed off on Crusades, they were just like, “We’ve been fighting fever for a long time, we kind of want a change of scene.” Then, in 1147, her son Henry, by this point, was 14 years old, redheaded, short and stocky, and very impetuous, he decided to just like invade England on his own against literally everyone’s advice, including Matilda’s. So, he just sort of sailed over with mercenary forces. But then he did not do amazing, it was all sort of chaotic. Stephen is just like, “What is this?” And then Henry ran out of money to pay his mercenaries. So, he asked Matilda and Geoffrey like, “Hey, can you loan me some money to pay my mercenaries?” And they were like, “No, because this was a stupid thing you just did.” So, then Henry turned to Stephen, like the man who’s trying to usurp, to be like, ”Can you pay me money for the mercenaries?” and Stephen paid him money for the mercenaries! Like, Stephen was also a good dude? So, the stalemate, there’s a little drama, but the stalemate continued on only occasional battles every now and then, like everyone was tired of fighting. And now it’s 1148.
Matilda heads off back to Normandy, which Geoffrey had successfully taken over, and it’s not like she’s retreating from the whole England side of things, it’s more just, like, that’s where more of her power was because Geoffrey had been officially named Duke of Normandy so Stephen didn’t have that title at all anymore. And then in 1149, Matilda’s uncle David, King of Scots, good dude, knighted her son Henry, which was sort of like in Roman times, getting the toga. This was like, “Now he’s a man,” and so that meant his cause was even more real a thing for people to stand behind because he wasn’t a boy; he was a man. He was 14!
So, Matilda settled into life. Like, she seriously like switched gears to be like, “Now I’m the mother of the king. I’m not going to try making myself anymore.” So, she lived in personal quarters at a priory because she’d always been a religiousy sort of person so now she’s living sort of a nun-ish life. She began focusing more on the Normandy side of things. Geoffrey died in 1151, unexpectedly, he was young, 38. That same year, her son Henry returned to England. He’s now 18 with a small army just to drum up some support again for the cause. But everybody was exhausted still from the years of war, and nobody really wanted to fight. Like, not on either side, not Stephen’s side, not on Henry’s side. Everyone’s just like, “Enough war, honestly.”
In 1152, Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was a very famous woman who maybe I’m going to do a podcast about next week. She was the Duchess of Aquitaine. Like, she wasn’t just the daughter of the duke, she literally had the power herself. So, she was a super eligible woman, an amazing person for him to marry because, through that match, that side acquired a whole bunch more French territory. She was super powerful. It was, like, a power couple-type situation. That same year, Stephen’s wife Mathilde died, RIP, 1153. Henry returned to England, where he and Stephen met to formally hash out some peace terms that wound up including Stephen would adopt Henry as his son in order to name him as his heir in place of Stephen’s own son Eustace. Eustace was really mad about this, by the way. He stormed out, ran away, and then died of, like, fever or whatever.
So, in 1154, Stephen died. So, what had happened is effectively, Matilda and her son had cornered Stephen to a point where he agreed to make Matilda’s son his heir, to not make his own son his heir. In order to sort of finagle this, he had to, like, adopt Henry, who was an adult, so that’s sort of, like, shades of ancient Rome stuff too. So, it just sort of sucks that Henry got named the heir as Stephen’s adopted son instead of as the rightful king, Matilda’s son. But just wait.
So, unlike the last two previous king deaths, Henry was out of town, but nobody else rode in on a horse to take over. He was in Normandy at the time, and he actually had to wait six weeks for the winds to be favourable enough to sail over. Matilda’s son Henry became the new King of England as Henry FitzEmpress. So, he went by that name; it meant ‘the son of the Empress.’ So, even though he was the “adopted son” of Stephen, Henry was for his whole life. He was like, “I am the son of the Empress, the son of Matilda.” And upon his coronation, all the troubles in Normandy ended, like, things just kind of sorted out because it was like, “Oh, great. A man is in charge? We’re fine.”
Matilda spent the rest of her life in Normandy, often acting as Henry’s representative and presiding over the government. Early on, Matilda and her son issued charters in England and Normandy in their joint name. So, he clearly respected his mother, he knew she knew what she was doing. He relied on Mathilde for advice and policy during the early years of his reign because she was Empress for 15 years, like, she knew what was up. She helped to deal with several diplomatic crises. One of these involved the hand of Saint James, which is literally a hand, one of those relics of, like, a piece of desiccated saint body. So, Matilda had brought the hand of Saint James back with her from Germany many years before. The new Holy Roman Emperor considered the hand to belong to them. And he requested that they return it to Germany. Matilda and Henry were like, “Nope, it’s going to stay here because tourists like to come here and visit it.” And finally, they’re able to buy off the Holy Roman Emperor with a bunch of expensive gifts, including a large, luxurious tent chosen by Matilda. Sure.
In her old age, Matilda paid increasing attention to church affairs and her personal faith. So, like her mother and her grandmother, just like, really leaning into the religious side of things. And she remained in Normandy, kind of governing it on her son’s behalf for most of her life. She was apparently more easygoing as she got older. But I mean, her son’s king, what did she have to worry about? There’s a chronicler named Mont Saint-Jacques who met her and he described her as being “Of the stock of tyrants.” So, she still had this like cool attitude that had rubbed some people the wrong way before, she never lost that. Good.
Matilda died on September 10, 1167, at the priory where she was living surrounded by the monks who had become sort of like her found family at that point. Her remaining wealth was given to the church because she was super religious. She was buried under the high altar in Bec Abbey by the archbishop. Her tomb’s epigraph includes the lines, “Great by birth, greater by marriage, greatest in her offspring. Here lies Matilda, the daughter, wife, and mother of Henry.” And the concept of a female ruler did not come up again for 400 years because every other king after this either had a son or was usurped by a guy. It never came up again that the only possible person was a woman. What happened 400 years later? That was the whole thing with Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I and the whole Henry VIII scenario, and we’re going to deal with all of that, I have to assume, in a whole podcast season of its own. But when that was all happening, people sort of looked back at Matilda to be like, because at that point she could be a precedent for Mary, for Elizabeth, to kind of see like, “Okay. Well, could a woman be in charge? What might that look like?” So, that precedent was kind of there. That is the life of Empress Matilda, and I just really admire her a lot to subject her to our little silly scale.
So, the Scandalicious Scale, we have four categories. And as per ever, like, we’re not saying one woman is better than the other. We’re just kind of like, this is a way of measuring where they each fall into these different categories. The first category is Scandaliciousness. So, this is sort of like, what sort of juicy goss comes out of this story. And Matilda was, like, a very upstanding person, so there’s minimal Scandaliciousness, I have to say. She was a little girl, she was married to an older man; that’s not really Scandalicious, that’s just like how things went. And then she went back, she married Geoffrey, she didn’t want to be with Geoffrey, they sort of separated, then they were forced back together, they had kids. Although, I’m going to give her a couple points. I’m going to give her a 3 for Scandaliciousness because some of her escapes were just, like, just so cool.
The next category is Schemieness, which, for somebody who wasn’t literally a queen, it’s more like, were they doing courtly scheming? But for someone like Matilda, who was overseeing battles, her Schemieness is a 10, flat out a 10. Dressing up in white to escape in the snow, a 10. Slipping out of having someone distract her enemy while she runs out and then rides on a horse for two days. She knew what was up. And then even the fact that eventually, she was like, “You know what? There’s too much sexism here; they’re never going to accept me as leader, I’m going to switch to my son.” Her Schemieness is pretty great.
Significance is interesting because she was never actually crowned Queen of England. She was called Lady of the English. It was the first time that a woman got this close to almost being queen. So, if she was the first woman queen, that would be like 10. I’m going to give her a 7 for Significance because she really broke a lot of ground that was later used by her later descendants, Elizabeth and Mary, to figure out how to do it.
Sexism Bonus, so this is how many points do we give her for how much did her sex hold her back? And for her, I’m giving her, this might be the first of anyone, a 10. Because if she had been a woman, if the culture had been less sexist, she would have just taken over, and she would have been amazing because she was amazing, because she knew what she was doing because she was amazing. But the whole thing, even the fact that she couldn’t come over and fight for her throne because she was pregnant is awful. That’s a full-on 10. Sexism just wrecked her chances.
So, that’s a 30! She’s in second place in this not-contest. So, just to be clear, in first place is from earlier this season, Agrippina the Younger, 31. Empress Matilda, 30. And then, just below her is Elizabeth Báthory with 29, and then Cleopatra and Lucy Hay with 28. So, I love that she’s up there. I love that she’s up there even though her Scandaliciousness was very low because she made up for it in these other areas.
So, this is Vulgar History, my name is Ann Foster. If you’re listening to this in the future, I hope pandemic stuff is a little less wild and weird. And I hope that the story was a fun little diversion for you.
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Part of when I do these revisiting episodes, I look back to see how did I score these people and would I score them the same now given other people that we’ve looked at and what they got up to. And I was like, no, I think like, even though I didn’t have a lot to compare her against, I think 30 is a solid score for Matilda. Well, the only place she could have gotten more points in was the Scandaliciousness and honestly, as much as it’s like, oh, she was going to war to take over the country, like, everything she did was like by the book, really, except for escaping in the snow, which is iconic and amazing. I couldn’t increase her score if I wanted to because I feel comfortable with how I scored her before.
But where she is with a 30, I mean, in terms of the, like, I don’t even know, 200 people we’ve done on this podcast or whatever, 30 and above, I think, is remarkable. I think that really means that’s sort of the upper echelon of, like, the Tits Out Brigade, oldey-timey version. And I think having her, I think that she was the first 30 we had. Anyway, so I’m comfortable with her at a 30. You know, people who are, like, a bit higher than her are people who are more scandalous, like Nefertiti, like Margaret Tudor, like they both have 31.5, for instance.
Anyway, yeah, so Empress Matilda. Honestly, it wasn’t a story that I had thought about in ages. Like, I do have a thing, I’m sure I’ve told you this before, where I sometimes forget who I’ve even done podcasts on. I have to, like, do a search of myself and go back through my own podcast app to be like, “Did I do an episode on that?” I remembered sort of the broad story of Matilda, but not all the things, the 11 Matildas, like, the actual good guys helping her out sometimes, the party ship. This is a great story told very well by me in 2020.
Anyway, so what is coming up next week is such a treat for your ears and it’s coming along with a big and exciting announcement. So, next week, major episode, major returning guest co-host, major topic, major news being announced next week and has to do with an in-person event. So, stay tuned next week for a very special episode of Vulgar History.
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If you want a little bit more whimsical, ephemeral, more than once-a-month content, you can join my Patreon, which you can do for free. That’s where I sort of share, like, polls and questions, and we discuss the most recent episodes, and if I find interesting, you know, like, articles about the people, I don’t know, maybe someone’s like, “Oh my god, we just excavated it. And we found like the bones of the people from the party ship,” you know, I might share that article there. So, we can all just talk about it. You can join by going to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. It’s kind of like social media, except you actually see the things I post if you want to see the things I post. Anyway, you can do that, and that’s all for free. You can absolutely, free members see lots of stuff.
Paid members see a little bit more stuff. So, if you pay at least $1/month, then you get early, ad-free access to all episodes of this podcast, past and present and future. I don’t know what present would be, like, this one. But you can listen to the old episodes without ads. You can listen to all new episodes without ads. And you can connect it to wherever you listen to your podcast if it’s in Spotify or if it’s on Apple podcasts, like, you don’t have to go into Patreon to listen to this. You can just connect them, it all works out really smoothly.
If you pledge $5 or more a month, you get a little bit more, which is in the form of access to our Discord, which is just like a big group chat for the Tits Out Brigade, just like, hang out and talk, share links. Sometimes I go there for, like, brainstorming or for help if I need, I don’t know, just like, ideas or if sometimes when there’s a campaign, like for instance, when there’s fan-voted awards, and somebody who we support is in that, then we, you know, that’s the place where you can post and be like, “Hey, everyone should vote on this thing,” or whatever. And also, if you join the Patreon at $5 or more a month, you get access to bonus episodes, which are things like The Aftershow, So This Asshole and Vulgarpiece Theatre. So, Vulgarpiece Theatre is where Allison Epstein, Lana Wood Johnson and I talk about costume dramas. I don’t think there is a costume drama about Matilda, which is preposterous. I do think that the House of the Dragon TV show is quasi-inspired by Matilda. I think, what’s her name? The blonde one? Rhaenyra? The one played by Emma D’Arcy is sort of a Matilda-type figure where it’s, like, she should have been the next monarch, but she’s not because she’s a woman. That’s the closest we’ve gotten. Like, how are we as a society, there’s still not a movie about Matilda> Not to mention how many movies there aren’t about, like, queer people from history and Black people from history and, like, so many things. But this is, like, a white woman from English history who was a heroine. Like, this is not a movie? Get it together, buddy. Anyway, so Vulgarpiece Theatre, you can listen to if you pledge $5 or more a month on the Patreon.
And what else? I have a Substack if you like to listen to or if you like to read words that I write because my book isn’t out yet but if you want to be like, “What’s it like to read something Ann wrote?” On Substack, every other week, I post essays about women from history. I’ll probably do one about Matilda because after redoing this episode, I was just like, I ride for this woman. I am obsessed with Matilda. Just, like, the Fredegund-adjacent energy has me excited. Anyway, if you want to read my feminist history essays, you can subscribe to those, VulgarHistory.Substack.com.
We also have a beautiful brand partner, Common Era Jewelry, which is a woman-owned small business that makes beautiful jewelry inspired by history and by women from history. I do know that Torie, the owner, she’s got new pieces coming out. I’m always like, “Can you just give me a preview? Can you let me know who it is?” I don’t get previews even though we’re a brand partner. Maybe one day, there’ll be a Matilda design. I don’t know. She really goes for people who from history who are fairly well-known. How well-known is Matilda? I’m going to say I can’t assess this anymore because, to me, Fredegund is the most famous woman in all of history, but the average person might not know who it is. But there are amazing people whose faces are designed into beautiful necklaces and rings from Common Era. So, there’s people we’ve talked about in the podcast. Agrippina is there, Hatshepsut is there, Cleopatra, Boudica, Anne Boleyn is there, as well as mythological figures like Medusa and Aphrodite. For all my sapphics out there, there is a Sappho design as well. These pieces from Common Era jewelry are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil, and Vulgar History listeners get 15% off your order from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout.
And if you want to really show someone you love them and if maybe that person’s yourself, like, show self-love to yourself with Vulgar History merchandise. If you’re in America, you can go to our American store, which is VulgarHistory.com/Store. Or if you’re outside the US, you can also go to VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com, which is our international store because I know people listen to this from various different places, and we want the shipping to be the best for everybody, and that’s why there’s two different stores. When I was first doing this podcast before I was working with actual artists who I pay for their beautiful designs, it was me and, like, Microsoft Paint, and I was designing things, having a nice time. Not the most artistically stimulating, but you know what? The classic, classic Vulgar History merchandise. The design I made at that time— Because I tried to make a shirt design for every episode, which was a ridiculous thing but also kind of a fun project for me. The one for Empress Matilda, I believe, was just plain white, like, just white, just plain, like a T-shirt that’s white, and then it said in small letters like, “Empress Matilda escaping in the snow,” or something like that. I found it hilarious. It’s like, in so many cities that have inclement weather, you can buy those postcards that are just, like, gray, and it’s like “London on a foggy day,” or whatever. Anyway, that was the design I did. Do you want me to bring it back? Let me know.
You can get in touch with me at the form, well, about that or about anything. If you go to VulgarHistory.com, there’s a little button that says, “Contact me,” and then that sends an email to me. And then you can let me know what you’re thinking of, and if you want this classic design back in the Vulgar History store, I will get an actual artist to design it. And yeah, I’m on various social medias, and you can contact me in those ways as well. I’m on Bluesky, on Instagram, on Threads. Just look up “Vulgar History Podcast,” and there I will be.
Next week, major episode, huge news, a guest you’re going to all be so happy to hear from, and I’m really excited for you to finally be able to tell you what this guest and I have to tell you. So, until next time, channel Matilda, you know? Just, like, put your enemies in chains, trap them in castles, put on white, escape in the snow and just like fuck off the patriarchy today and all days. And until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
Matilda: Empress, Warrior, Queen by Catherine Hanley
She-Wolves by Helen Castor
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